Former Cold-Rolled Strip Steel Workshop, Shanghai No. 10 Steel Works

The former Cold-Rolled Strip Steel Workshop of Shanghai No. 10 Steel Works is located at 570 Huaihai West Road, Changning District, and was founded in 1950. The site includes a factory building with a reinforced-concrete bent-frame structure.
In February 1956, six companies, including Yongji Steel Sheet Factory, merged to form Shanghai No. 10 Steel Works. It once achieved a record annual output of 400,000 tonnes of cold- and hot-rolled strip steel, and was the largest state-owned enterprise in Changning at the time. The site witnessed a special period of rapid progress in Shanghai’s metallurgical industry after the 1950s. It still preserves the large-scale factory space of that era, with exposed red-brick exterior walls and black steel-framed façade windows, reflecting China’s early industrialisation requirements for special steel production, techniques and processes, as well as the industrial architectural aesthetic of that period.

In the early 1990s, as urban renewal progressed, Shanghai No. 10 Steel Works gradually became industrial heritage. Later, through conservation-led restoration and deeper exploration of its cultural value, it began a new chapter. Shanghai A.F.A was transformed from the former Cold-Rolled Strip Steel Workshop of Shanghai No. 10 Steel Works. It has become a new landmark for urban art and commerce in Shanghai, gradually realising the vision of “bringing cultural relics to life”.